


cloud prayer mary

by stutter



Series: civilians [4]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe: Mundane Lives, Christmas Spirit, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:53:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21939262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stutter/pseuds/stutter
Summary: “Are you going home for Christmas?” Katya asks out of nowhere, a few days into December.
Relationships: Trixie Mattel/Katya Zamolodchikova
Series: civilians [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1397551
Comments: 28
Kudos: 126





	cloud prayer mary

**Author's Note:**

> A little bonus scene from the civilians verse for the holidays! this'd be the Christmas following the events of [this is the world of the theater](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21208919), so a cute 8-9 months later? I really don’t think you need to read anything else in the series to understand this one. It’s Christmas, and they’re in love. Title is from “the spirit of giving” by the new pornographers, and it’s a great listen.  
> A million thanks as always to [joanneelizabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joanneelizabeth/pseuds/joanneelizabeth), [mattepinkallshades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattepinkallshades/pseuds/mattepinkallshades), and [connyhascontrol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connyhascontrol/pseuds/connyhascontrol) for their love and support and for teaching me about the spirit of Christmas. and of course, of course, of course, to [beanierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose) for being a fearless beta, a brilliant writer, and a beautiful person. man am I lucky.

“Are you going home for Christmas?” Katya asks out of nowhere, a few days into December. Trixie glances up from his laptop. He’s editing a new mix for the two of them to perform together, an incongruous combination of The Bangles and _Drop Dead Gorgeous._ It’s still a mess, but he believes in it. Ain’t that always the way? 

“No,” he says. That’s not an option for him. It hasn’t been in years. And anyway, this is home, palm trees and fake snow at the Beverly Center and Katya curled up next to him with his feet wedged under Trixie’s thigh. He nods at this, then turns his attention to his phone. Trixie feels his brows go up. 

“Any, like, particular reason you’re asking?” he prompts, after a few more silent moments. “Or are you just taking a survey?”

“Hmm?” Katya pauses. Trixie watches the wheels spin to life in his brain, and then his face brightens. “Oh! You wanna come home with me?”

Trixie blinks at him. “Like—to Boston?”

“Technically just outside Boston,” Katya says, drawing a map in the air with his hands and indicating a space somewhere to the left. “But yeah. My mom asked if you were coming, and I realized I’d never actually asked.”

His _mom._ Trixie forgets sometimes that Katya didn’t erupt fully-formed from the San Andreas Fault, that he had a childhood, has memories, a family he likes enough to hopscotch two time zones for. A family he’s told about Trixie, a family he wants him to meet. Something crackles to life in Trixie’s chest and warms him to the skin. “Yeah, all right,” he says slowly. “You sure?”

“Of course I am, bitch. Cool! It’ll be cute,” Katya says. Then he smiles at Trixie and goes back to his phone, where he’s intensely focusing on - it looks like - swapping their faces on the poster for their next show. 

\---

They’ve got gigs through the entire week leading up to Christmas, so they have no choice but to fly out the morning of Christmas Eve. They get round-trip tickets at agonizing, inhumane hours so the flights will be less expensive. Katya’s mom has apparently offered to pay, but he denies her on principle. “It’s not a pride thing,” he explains, lifting his legs so Trixie can zip their shared suitcase closed around them, “She’d just be so happy to do it, and I can’t stand to think of her happy.”

“And you obviously want me to suffer, too,” he pants, flopping down on the floor with his back against the bed. Katya wheezes, rolling off the suitcase and sliding down to the floor to sit beside him. 

“Earthly torment is my love language, bitch,” he says, smiling warmly.

Trixie snorts. “I know, girl, you’re the one making me wake up at five A.M.” But he still reaches out and brushes his knuckles against the stubble growing out on Katya’s jaw. Katya leans into it with a leonine purr. Another day or two and it’ll be soft, a warm whisper against Trixie’s throat when they wake up tangled together. “What’s this? Butching it up for the family?” he teases, tugging at the bristles. 

Katya laughs. “Oh, yes _gawd,_ a lifetime of overt faggotry pales in comparison to a five-o-clock shadow.” He snaps his teeth at Trixie’s lingering fingers so Trixie has to pull them back with a giggle. “They’re not like that, mama,” Katya says. “You think, what? That I’m gonna tell ‘em you’re my _roommate?”_

“Of course not! I just - I mean, like, they’re - ” Trixie’s neck prickles with embarrassment. “I mean, who in their right mind would ever believe I wanted to live with _you?_ ” he says hotly, and Katya screams in outrage and tackles him to the floor in one pounce. 

“You cunt!” he exclaims over Trixie’s shrieks of protest. “You think anyone in my family’s in their right fucking mind?” 

“Get _off_ me,” Trixie shrills, as Katya dips over him and kisses him quiet. He wants to keep fighting, but Katya’s mouth on his has a narcotic effect, and he closes his eyes and gives himself to it.

“Listen,” Katya says when he pulls away. “They’re like. Tracy. They’re not like that. Okay? I promise.” 

“No, I know,” Trixie says, catching his breath. “I don’t know why I’m…” He trails off. Katya looks down at him with a placid expression and frames the side of Trixie’s face with one hand. 

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” he says. “Like, with your, like, full and enthusiastic consent, or whatever.”

“Okay.” Trixie nudges his face to the side just enough to get the pad of Katya’s thumb between his lips. Katya’s mouth twitches up. 

“I’m gonna blow you until your brain stops doing… whatever it’s doing right now,” Katya says. Trixie’s back arches off the floor an inch. “And then you’re gonna get a solid three and a half hours of sleep, and then we’re gonna get our asses to the airport and have a holly jolly, y’know, yuletide extravaganza, and it’s going to be lovely. Okay? I promise. And then we’ll come home. How’s that sound?”

Trixie bites down on Katya’s thumb until he hisses and pulls back with a grin. “You better be nice to me, you goddamn slut,” Katya says gently. “I’ve got teeth, too.”

Trixie runs his hands up Katya’s thighs. “C’mon, Katya, please,” he says, in a soft voice he reserves for important moments like this one. He might not have any formal training in bodywork like Katya does, but Trixie knows a thing or two about pressure points, all right? He watches Katya’s jaw go slack at the tone of his voice and bites his lip to keep back a grin.

Katya scoots back a few inches to straddle Trixie’s legs. “That’s more like it,” he murmurs. “See, a little display of manners can really put one in the spirit of giving.”

“Oh, honey,” Trixie purrs, “You can put one in anything you want, honey.”

Katya cackles, miming like he’s going to finally strangle Trixie to death. Trixie reaches up to snatch his hands and draw him down tight against him. “I fuckin’ hate you,” Katya giggles, reaching down between them so he can tug open the fly on Trixie’s jeans and take him in his hand. Trixie’s head lifts and then knocks back against the floor. “Oh my god, don’t you dare concuss yourself. I’m not spending Christmas in the hospital.” Katya looks thoughtful for a moment. “Not _again,_ ” he corrects himself.

Trixie laughs, startled, but before he can ask any follow-up questions Katya’s sunk down over him, mouth hot and eager. “Fuck, _yes,”_ he breathes, and Katya makes good on his offer, working him over until Trixie’s brain is slush, half-melted and silent and cool.

\---

After a series of deeply rotted weather-related delays, a cab drops them off outside Katya’s childhood home at nearly nine o’clock at night. They’ve been up since pre-dawn in LA, and Trixie’s stomach churns from nerves and the Red Bull he’s been mainlining to stay alert. Katya’s been practically catatonic, offering his shoulder for Trixie to snooze on and little else, but apparently he’s just been conserving his energy. As he wrestles their suitcase out of the trunk, Trixie can see he’s practically humming with excitement. He takes in the place with bright eyes and a placid grin. Trixie turns to see what he sees. 

It’s a cute, two-story home nestled in the middle of a quiet cul-de-sac. It’s like a crayon drawing Trixie could’ve done as a child: _House._ The windows leak ordinary yellow light, devoid of mysterious silhouetted figures performing strange contortions. None of the curtains Trixie can see are patterned in Black Lodge chevron. The front yard is not busy with feral raccoons. Anybody could’ve grown up here. There are voices within, a hint of festive music in the air. It’s a nice house hosting a party a few days before Christmas. That’s all it is. 

“Okay,” Katya says, carefully _grand battement-_ ing the cab’s door shut and starting up the walkway to the front door. He’s rolling their suitcase behind him; Trixie’s hands dig uselessly into the pockets of his too-thin coat. He’s got a few sweaters, some flannel, all of which he’s brought, but nothing in his closet truly befits a frozen New England winter. The cold sharpens his brain, wakes him to the bones. “I don’t know how many people are gonna be here, like, the Christmas party’s gonna be in full swing, but - they’re mostly all nice, okay? They’re lovely. And my family’s gonna love you.”

“I get it! You keep saying,” Trixie scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Who you trying to convince, bitch?” 

Katya doesn’t take the bait, doesn’t even nibble. He leans in and kisses Trixie very gently on the tip of his nose. “You,” he says. Then he opens the unlocked door and steps through.

Entering the front room is like dropping feet-first into a river of bright light, laughter, noise, and Trixie’s underwater, fumbling for Katya’s hand in the rush of it, now losing him, now finding him for a moment again, and then being swept off once more on his own current. Rooms full of strangers aren’t new to him; he’s a drag queen, Linda, thank you for noticing. Making himself comfortable through endless introductions and small talk is generally a pleasure, an invitation to be quick and funny and charming. It’s just that he usually does it from a comfortable eight to ten inches above everybody else, surrounded by a protective force field of padding and hair, safe the way a poisonous lizard is safe in the rainforest, its beauty a warning. 

_Hi, I’m Brian, nice to meet you,_ he says over and over again, smiling. _Hi, hello, nice to meet you, I’m Brian, I’m here with…_ Someone takes his coat, someone else puts a beer in his hand, and he whirls from face to smiling face, _hi, I’m Brian,_ until a hand tightens around his arm and yanks him into an adjoining kitchen.

“Six feet tall and dressed like a fuckin’ lumberjack and I _still_ lost him,” Katya’s griping. It’s much quieter in here, and Trixie gets his bearings by focusing on all the points where Katya’s fingers press into his forearm, and widening the scope out until he can take it all in. Katya’s got his other arm around a tiny older lady in a red sweater. “This is my mom.”

“Hi,” Trixie says, and then, “Oh!” as Katya’s mom, smiling broadly, wraps him up in a hug. “Hi, it’s so nice to meet you!” 

“Katya has told us so much about you,” she says. Her accent is thick, all New England, zero percent Eastern European. _Cat-yuh._ Trixie can hear the air-quotes she hangs around the name, but they feel playful and conspiratorial, not pointed or mocking in the slightest. Katya’s hovering nearby, hands vanished up into the sleeves of his oversized sweater. His arms are folded as he watches them, all his weight knocked onto his back leg, the posture of someone settling in for a good long stare at their favorite painting in a museum. He’s got a secret little grin on his face. One hand comes up to his mouth like he might hide his smile behind it.

“No I haven’t,” Katya corrects her. “He could be an escaped convict.”

“Okay, well, no he hasn’t, maybe you are,” she concedes to Trixie, raising an eyebrow. “I guess that’d make sense.” She jerks her head back at Katya, then makes a big show of rolling her eyes. _This one!_

Katya doubles over laughing. “I’m not, I promise,” Trixie says, holding up a hand. “I’m Brian. Also. As well. I’m sure he mentioned that much, right, about our names?” 

She and Katya nod at each other. “Do you want us to call you Trixie?” she asks. 

“MA!” Katya bellows, throwing his hands over his face, visibly mortified. Trixie’s mouth hangs open, shock and delight.

“Brian is fine,” he says. Katya’s mom still has a hand on his arm, and he reaches over with the opposite hand and squeezes it once. “But, that’s -” He pauses, lets it really hit him. “That’s so nice of you to ask.”

And then it’s back out into the living room, a fog of introductions: Katya’s brother and sister, their respective spouses; an aunt from out of state, Delaware, Trixie thinks; some childhood friend of Katya’s sister who throws her arms around Katya with a shriek, prompting a laugh from Katya loud enough to turn heads; someone’s child, a round pink baby that Katya accepts into his arms with the cautious, wide-eyed zeal of a kid in a doll commercial. Trixie grips his unsipped beer in a tightening fist until it becomes clear Katya’s not about to drop the baby or gesture too broadly and send it sailing away on its first-ever crowd surf. Then he relaxes, clocking the way Katya’s shoulders slope in toward it, how his face goes a little dreamy. It’s sweet, kind of, and deeply surreal. 

He dances the baby closer to Trixie’s face after a moment. “You wanna hold her?” 

Trixie raises the beer bottle in his hand. “Your, I wanna say, your dad just handed me this before, like… I don’t know if double-fisting an IPA and an infant is the _best_ look?” 

Katya’s face breaks open with a silent laugh. “I love him, trying to relate to you in the like, _least_ effective way possible - ‘ _put ‘er there, bud, have a brewski,’_ ” he grumbles out, keeping his voice carefully hushed - the baby’s little hands curl and uncurl in the air as she sleeps. “Just a quick note, maybe try to avoid putting ‘fisting’ in the same sentence as ‘infant’ when you’re meeting someone’s family for the first time.” Trixie chomps his tongue so he won’t yell. “And when have you ever drunk a beer in your goddamn life?” 

“Oh, bitch, _never,”_ Trixie hisses back. Katya’s face twists in quiet amusement, but he holds uncharacteristically still. “But what was I supposed to say? ‘Sorry, can you make a greyhound?’”

“He’d probably try it, too,” Katya muses. “Okay, let me go dump this thing on some neighbor’s doorstep and then I need a fucking cigarette. You wanna come out with me?”

There are few circumstances under which Trixie would willingly submit to standing in breathing range of Katya with a cigarette. But it’s Christmas, bitch, it’s a magical and miraculous time of the year. He nods. Katya brushes his lips against the baby’s forehead and mouths _one second_ to Trixie as he looks for someone to relieve him of his nanny duties. 

He comes back a few moments later. Trixie’s taken a few nervous swigs of his beer, despite its objective grossness. Katya’s eyes flick between the bottle and Trixie’s mouth, glittering with amusement. “Here,” he says, holding out his own coat for Trixie to take. 

Trixie frowns. “Where’s mine?”

“Yours is completely inappropriate for this weather, you West-Coast-ass bitch,” Katya says. “Here. Here here here. Put it on.”

“Oh my god.” Trixie takes another drink, just to prove how at-home he is in this environment. “I’m fine!”

“Tracy, you’re gonna die out there,” Katya says, rolling his eyes. “Put on the fuckin’ coat, diva.” He holds it out towards Trixie at arm’s length, as if it’s suddenly become infected with some dire toxin that only Trixie’s body can neutralize. 

With a martyred sigh, Trixie slips into the wool coat. It smells like Katya, warm and smoky, with a spicy undercurrent that defies classification. It’s linked in his brain inextricably to sex, to hot shared breaths and Katya’s mouth on his pulse. Pheromone city. Trixie’s dick jerks suddenly, and he has to tip his head all the way back and breathe deep the room’s air to return to his senses, like he’s trying to stop a nosebleed. He puts the bottle on a nearby table and shoves his hands into Katya’s pockets. Katya, for his part, is wearing a hideous, immense red puffer jacket that’s swallowing him whole. Off Trixie’s look, he grins. “My olda brotha’s,” he says in his most awful, gravelly voice. “Gotta _prawblem_ widdit?”

“Oh my god, you have to stop,” Trixie says, voice cracking with restrained laughter, “it’s like, _too_ real, I can fully see it, like, this person…”

“‘Ey, Tracy, would you still let me stick it in ya if I _tawked_ like this?” Katya rasps, and then, off Trixie’s horrified face, flails with machine-gun laughter. “Come on,” he says in his own soft voice, guiding Trixie toward the front door with a touch to the spine. “I’ll stop, I promise.”

“I’ll literally fly home alone,” Trixie grumbles, but he goes easily. Katya opens the front door and cold air punches them both right in the face, making them wince and stagger. Trixie tucks his chin down and zips the coat all the way up, then buttons the closures for good measure. He remembers how to brave the cold, how to hold warmth inside his coat, some forgotten instinct kicking in the same way a dog starts paddling at the sight of water in the distance. 

Katya eases the door closed behind them. The light from the front room of his childhood home thins to a gold sliver along his shoulder and chest and then slips out of existence with the click of the lock. In the silence of the night air, Trixie finds a held breath in his lungs that’s at least an hour old and lets it out slowly.

“You good, mama?” Katya is asking suddenly in his ear, twining his arms around Trixie’s waist. “I know it’s a lot.” Katya’s ugly borrowed jacket rustles loudly against Trixie’s back. Trixie digs his hands further into the pockets of Katya’s coat and pulls out his American Spirits, presses them into Katya’s palm. Katya makes a high, pleased sound. Trixie’s throat convulses with laughter.

“I just don’t get it,” he says, craning back to press his mouth against Katya’s cheek. Their breath clouds around them and dissolves into the night. “Your whole family is, like, _so_ nice. And you still turned out like _this._ ”

Katya shrieks with laughter. “Shut up, you cunt!” He leans in and nibbles at Trixie’s earlobe, making him jerk away and race down the icy steps with a deathgrip on the railing. “I know. See? I told you it’d be fine.” 

“You’re so lucky,” Trixie says. It comes out sharp, glinting metallic under the streetlights. He adds, softer, “They really are great. Thank you for inviting me. This is really, really nice.” 

He’s keyed-up from using his manners. He was raised right, sure, but he’s a native speaker many years removed from that motherland at this point. And he wants Katya’s family to like him; he doesn’t want to be anything but the nice young man Brian’s brought home. He wants, suddenly, to melt into Katya like a marshmallow into a mug of Swiss Miss, to be airy and harmless, to complement Katya and sweeten him more. 

“They like you,” Katya tells him, carefully descending the front steps. Trixie puts a hand out on instinct, the same way he does for her at _HI!!!_ when she’s clambering back up from a split in heels. When she deigns to wear them, anyway. “I knew they would.”

“I like them!” Trixie says. Katya fumbles a cigarette out of the pack and slips it, unlit, between his lips. He gestures the pack politely toward Trixie, flipping it open with his thumb for him to take one. “Fuck you,” Trixie says, but quietly. He’s senselessly paranoid that Katya’s mom might hear him. Katya laughs like a cartoon snake.

“Bundle up,” he says. “Here, gimme my lighter, and then reach to the inside pocket. I stuck a hat in there for you.”

“Gag!” Trixie hands over the lighter, then does as he’s told, pulling a blue knit hat from the inside pocket. He jams it on, grinning. Out of his own bulging pockets, Katya produces an extra pair of gloves and even, somehow, a scarf, which he starts wrapping carefully around Trixie’s throat. “You are a full-on _dad,”_ Trixie marvels. “Look at you, making sure I don’t die.”

Trixie turns his attention to the gloves, flexing his fingers inside of them, and when he looks back up Katya’s staring at him strangely. “What?” Trixie demands. He tugs his hat down harder to cover his ears. “What’s that face?”

“Nothin’!” Katya steps back, admiring his handiwork, and reaches out a gloved hand for Trixie to take. “I just like you. God, get off my back. Is that a crime, Mary?” 

Trixie feels overdressed suddenly in his warm layers. He tucks his chin further into the collar of the coat, like that could mask his big dumb grin. “No. It’s super, _super_ gay, though.” He takes Katya’s hand and lets him lead him away from the front door. 

“Well, hello, yes. We’ve met before,” Katya says lightly. “C’mon. You wanna walk for a few minutes? This whole street over here on the left always goes balls-out on the decorating, it’s _fabulous._ ”

It starts snowing again, right on cue, fat wet flakes that sift down all around them and cling to their hats and eyelashes. Katya cranes up to watch the snow come down and immediately takes a cluster to the eye. He yelps in surprise, squeezing Trixie’s hand tighter as he paws at his face with his free knuckles.

“Oh my god!” Trixie grabs his face in his hands and turns it up towards his own. “You big baby. Are you going to live?”

Katya flops his tongue out. “Not after a while, but, for now I’m good,” he says. He’s still got his left eye closed. A tear track of snow runs down his cheek. Trixie leans in on impulse and kisses his eyelid. Both of Katya’s eyes blink open and fix on him, wide and warm.

“Shut up,” Trixie says, and Katya screams with laughter. 

There’s a quality to this thing they have that feels a little like spirit possession, and not just because Katya is Beelzebub in the flesh. Trixie’s limbs occasionally move of their own accord, reach for Katya in a way that feels reflexive, predetermined, compulsive. Katya does it too, sometimes, absently finding Trixie’s fingers with his own or running a thumb along the shell of his ear. Then after a few minutes he’ll look at his hand on Trixie’s body like it’s a large but harmless insect. _How did this get here?_

Katya, cigarette dangling between his lips, twirls in the snow, giving full Winona at the end of _Edward Scissorhands._ “ _Oooh!_ ” He’s voguing across the empty street now, badly, striking pose after pose with a series of very high-fashion yips and whimpers. Trixie walks slowly after him, arms folded, laughing silently. The cold air gets in his mouth and chokes him, but he hardly notices. 

“What are you doing?” he yells. “You look like the worm trying to escape an apple in that rotted jacket.” 

Katya shrieks with laughter, then spins into a nearby tree, pressing his back against it in a dramatic damsel’s swoon. Snow thumps to the ground all around him, and Trixie almost loses his balance cackling. “ _Oh!”_ he moans. “Oh, bitch, when I was like, thirteen growing up around here, a snowy night like this made me _feel my fucking fantasy,_ bitch!” He frames his face with his long hands, staring into the distance as if tragically besotted with the night sky. “Taking the long way home with my Walkman, living my Tori Amos truth -” 

“Your _Walkman_ ,” Trixie crows. “Never let me forget how old you are!” 

Katya whirls away from the tree, twisting and writhing his way back over toward Trixie. “ _When you gonna make up your mind?”_ he croons, tonelessly, in a voice Trixie imagines he thinks is extremely sexy and feminine. “ _When you gonna love you as much as I do?”_

Trixie shoves his thumbnail in his mouth, watching Katya clamp both hands around the nearest streetlight and spin. “I don’t know this one,” he calls out to him. “Watch it, girl, I’m not dragging you to the hospital if you bruise your tailbone.” 

Katya laughs with his head thrown back. Trixie squints. The falling snow transforms him for a moment, just a blink’s worth of time, into herself, and when she looks over at Trixie with her eyes lit up so happily it snatches the air right out of his chest. Then the light catches at another angle and he’s back, and Trixie is blinking ice off his eyelashes and chasing him out of the the cul-de-sac toward another street off to the left.

By the time he catches up, Trixie’s fully winded from the freezing air and has to drape himself over Katya for support. Katya takes hold of Trixie’s right arm and squeezes him in close. “Look!” he says. Panting, Trixie looks. 

“Oh, wow, okay,” he says in a hushed voice. “You were not kidding. Work!” They’re not the only people on this street; cars idle on either side of the road, dispelling puffs of exhaust into the night air. Pedestrians wander from house to house, too. Couples cling to each other. Little kids run sloppy loops around their parents, hyperactive on snowfall and holiday magic. Trixie’s never held Katya close like this in public outside the bubble of safety that is LA. But something in the air makes him brave, and he doesn’t loosen his grip, doesn’t move back. 

“We always used to walk over here together,” Katya says. His voice is low, too, softer than usual. “Pretty sickening, right?” 

“Are you kidding?” Trixie slips his hand down into Katya’s jacket pocket, and Katya’s fingers meet his there at once. “This could not be _more_ my shit.” 

Every house on the block is lit up with dazzling white lights. It’s like they all got together and coordinated. Which Trixie’s sure they did. What else is there to do in the suburbs? One front yard boasts a team of brilliant animated reindeer, nodding their heads in slow syncopation like they’ve all just heard a real thinker of a joke. He can make out a nativity scene a little ways down, and a multitude of cheery wire-frame snowmen, bases as wide as hoop skirts. Some of the houses twinkle with electric icicles; some have plastered luminous snowflakes over their entire facades. When Trixie tears his eyes away from the houses to glance at Katya, he finds his face illuminated bright as midday, his eyes shining glacier-blue. “God,” Trixie says. 

“Yeah.” In the pocket of his borrowed coat, he squeezes Trixie’s hand tight. “I fuckin’ love Christmas.”

“I love it, too,” Trixie says. His toes are aching with cold in his shoes, and though Katya’s stubbed out his cigarette the smell still lingers around them both like a grey fog. He’s going blind from the snow, reducing the whole beautiful street to a shimmering gold and white haze through his lashes. He’s jet-lagged and tired and horny from the smell of Katya lingering in this coat, and a bed is hours away. He’s never been happier. 

They wander down the lane together, idling in front of each display for a moment, until Trixie’s feet finally get so numb that he’s tripping over them with every step. Katya chuckles at him and links his arm through Trixie’s. “Come on,” he says, hauling him around and starting back towards the house. “You’re gonna get frostbite. And the sooner we get back, the sooner I can get you out of those wet clothes.” 

The rush of blood that pulses through Trixie at the words dissipates immediately as Katya digs his freezing-cold nose under Trixie’s ear. It sends him wriggling away with a shout of laughter, which catches on Katya, until they’re both making such an unholy gay racket that Trixie would swear the glowing reindeer all crane to glare at them. Katya suddenly takes off toward the house, and Trixie races after him, a cloud of snow blooming up around their legs like moon dust. 

\---

The last party guests are gone by 11:30 - god bless straight people, Trixie thinks, and god bless the suburbs - and then Katya’s family are all bundling into their coats to hustle off to Midnight Mass.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Katya’s mom asks Trixie earnestly. “They really do such a nice service - Katya used to love it, all the singing, and the lights… ” She’s got both hands on his biceps again; she’s touchy and affectionate in a way that Trixie finds immediately, sweetly familiar. He smiles down at her, trying to find the kindest phrasing for _there’s no way in gay hell I am going to church right now,_ but Katya cuts in. 

“Ma, please, we’ve been in transit all day,” he says, gently peeling her off of Trixie and pulling him in close. “We’re just gonna pile out, okay? And anyway, I took him to the Christmas street earlier. We did lights.” 

“I don’t mind,” Trixie lies, a real trapeze-swinging leap of a relationship move. “It sounds nice. I’m down to go.”

“We’re not gonna do that,” Katya says, catching him out of the air like he’s weightless. “I’m sure we’ll be asleep when you get back. See you all in the morning, okay?” He leans past Trixie to peck his mother on the forehead. “Peace be with you!” he tells them all brightly, and that’s the end of the discussion.

When the door closes behind them, Katya waits exactly one beat before slinging his arms around Trixie’s waist and pulling him in close for a kiss. “You are so rotted,” he laughs against his mouth. “You don’t _mind?_ You wanna go to _Midnight Mass_ , bitch?”

  
“I just - shut _up!_ ” Trixie cackles. “I just want them to think I’m, like, nice.”

“You’ve got ‘em all fooled, honey, I promise.” Katya nips at his lower lip and then kisses him properly again. Desire burns low and blue in his chest like a pilot light. “C’mon. You wanna come, like, hang out in my room?”

Trixie giggles shrilly as Katya turns on his heel and starts leading him up the stairs. He can shrink him in his mind to teenaged Brian, with his huge eyes and tragic haircut. Trixie’s seen pictures. _Mama._ “I am - literally, I am not joking in the slightest - I am _dying_ to see what your childhood bedroom looks like,” he tells Katya’s back. 

Katya wanders down the hallway at the top of the stairs, dragging his fingertips along the floral wallpaper on either side in a wavy pattern, some compulsive childhood reflex coming back. His familiarity butts up against how unmoored Trixie feels here, and it makes him want to draw in closer, cling to Katya like a life raft. “It’s not that crazy,” Katya says. “I was like any other red-blood-sucking, all-American girl.” He grins at Trixie over his shoulder. “See?”

They hit the door at the end of the hallway and Katya pushes it open. Trixie shrieks. “Oh my god, it really is Christmas!” He peers at the walls, running his hands over everything, the gothy art prints and French movie posters and magazine cutouts, male and female faces and bodies jumbled together in haphazard collages of adolescent desire. “This is better than I ever imagined,” he tells Katya. “I don’t know what even half this shit is! _Bitch!_ Why do we even like each other!” 

“What the fuck is _this_?” gripes Katya, goggling at the stationary bike in the center of the room. “And why’s it in my _room?_ ”

“Is this Brandon Lee? Is this _The Crow?”_ Trixie asks, jabbing his finger into a pale white face glaring out from above Katya’s twin-sized bed. “It was before my time, you have to tell me, I’m too young.” 

“That’s Florina Kendrick, you dunce,” Katya says. “Fuck! Why wouldn’t she tell me this was here?”

“So? I mean, your mom’s got a great bod, she’s keeping it tight, good for her,” Trixie says. “This one’s Brandon Lee for sure, right?” 

Katya peers at it. “That’s Siouxsie Sioux. The one on the other side of the bed is Brandon Lee.” He passes a hand over his head and sinks down onto the bed. “I figured we’d just blow up the air mattress on the floor, but… ” 

“Girl, it’s fine.” Trixie sits beside him and nuzzles his face into the crook of his neck. “I can sleep on the couch downstairs, I don’t care. But we can also totally make this work.”

Katya turns his face into Trixie, planting a kiss between his eyes. “You don’t mind?” he asks. 

“Please!” The bed’s soft, anyway, and he’s so fucking beat. It looks as good to him now as any king-size. “I spent most of my college years squeezed into a bed this size with my boyfriend. If you hadn’t been a total virgin until you were 40, you’d know this is perfectly doable,” Trixie says sagely. 

Katya smacks at him lightly. “You’re such a bitch,” he says. “So _mean._ ” Trixie leans in and kisses him before he can assassinate his character any further, and Katya gets into it, grabbing Trixie by the lapels and hauling him as close as he can without knocking them both over. The little flame in his ribs kicks up, growing brighter even as his brain begs for sleep. He opens up for Katya, wraps his arms around him, clambers up to straddle his lap and press his weight down against him. Katya groans quietly, so Trixie does it again.

“You want me to say something real gross?” he whispers. “Something about being on the naughty list? That do anything for you?” 

Katya tips his head back and unleashes a wail of laughter into the air. “Okay, that’s, no.” He pushes Trixie off of him so he tumbles onto the mattress. “Absolutely not. I have no time for that kind of festive heresy whatsoever.” He stands up and goes to their suitcase, which someone has leaned jauntily against the exercise machine, and starts digging through it. “Listen, hold that thought, I feel - _disgusting._ And not only because of what you just said. I’m gonna take a quick shower. That okay?” 

Trixie nods. Katya tosses him a pair of his sweatpants, and Trixie catches them out of the air with one hand. “Probably best for everyone involved,” he says. Katya sticks his tongue out at him. 

“Don’t move, you rotted cunt,” he says. “I’ll be fast.” 

“Where am I gonna go?” Trixie laughs. Katya rolls his eyes at him, then leans in for one more kiss and slips out of the room.

Trixie flops back against the pillows, breathing deeply to get his body and his brain on the same page. He takes off his flannel and wriggles out of his jeans. He knows he’s got his sweatpants right there, but putting them on feels like a tremendous effort, so he lies still in his boxer briefs and t-shirt, letting himself sink into the bed like he could fall right through. After a moment, he hears the shower come on through the wall with a clear hissing sound. Old pipes, just like in his house growing up. He stares at the ceiling and walls, picturing Katya as a teenager, sorting through magazines and newspapers for things he liked, things that made him happy. Trixie’s gone over to Katya’s place before to find him stooped over a basic pair of shoes or a cheap dress, surrounded by baubles and crystals and beads, happily hot-glueing something beautiful into existence. He’s been like this forever. It’s a warm thought, a comforting one. He’s still thinking it when the whole day catches up to him, sleek and sudden, and then he’s asleep on top of the covers.

\---

He wakes to dim blue light on his eyelids. His arm is twisted under him at a weird angle, and his whole front is _hot_. His eyes open immediately, like he was only blinking, not asleep.

“Hi,” Katya whispers. He’s spooned in front of him, staring into the dull white light of his phone. “Did I wake you?”

“Mm-mm.” Trixie shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I’m just - awake. What time is it?” 

“Jet lag o’clock, bitch.” Katya cranes over his shoulder and catches Trixie’s cheek for a kiss. “I can’t stay asleep, either. You were passed straight out when I came in, though, lookin’ like a corpse. It was hysterical.” 

“Fuck.” Trixie squints at Katya’s phone screen and sees the actual time. “Oh my god, it’s like four in the morning.” He pauses, thinking. “It’s Christmas, huh.”

“Uh-huh.” Katya wriggles onto his back and gives him a soft smile. “You better go back to sleep, little girl, or Santa won’t leave you a single present.” 

“Ew.” He pushes himself up on one elbow, unable to stop himself from grinning down at Katya. There’s barely room for either of them to move; Katya’s wedged between Trixie’s body and the wall, and his face is drawn with exhaustion, but he looks alert. “Merry Christmas. You sleep at all?” 

“Here and there.” Katya reaches up and runs a hand over Trixie’s cheek. “Like, I’m tired, but my brain is all…” He darts his eyes around, grinds his jaw. “It’s _awful._ ” 

Trixie grins. “Your accent is stronger back home,” he tells him. “‘It’s _ahh_ ful.’ You’re not even doing it on purpose, it’s just, like, happening.” 

“Oh my gawd, is it?” Katya asks, looking panicked. Trixie giggles as quietly as he can. The house is silent in a way LA never gets, and he knows the rest of Katya’s family is sleeping somewhere on this floor. “Ugh. It’s such an ugly accent. That’s why I left Boston, probably.”

“Bahstin, prahbably,” Trixie mimics. Katya hisses with laughter, convulsing against him. “Come on!” Trixie demands in a whisper. “I’m doing it! That’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

Katya scrunches his face up. “Don’t say the -” 

“Pahk the _cah_ , right?” Trixie says eagerly. 

“Stop it!” Katya covers his face with both hands, then rolls onto his side away from Trixie. He can’t get far, and Trixie won’t let him, either, looping an arm around Katya’s waist to pull him in tight. “Oh my god. You sound like all my brother’s dirtbag friends from high school.”

Trixie groans. He can feel a tremor go through Katya at his voice on his ear. “Some of them must’ve been kind of hot, right?” he says. “Like, they’re gross, but they’re always kind of - “

“You’re disgusting,” Katya chides. “You’re perverse! Of _course_ they were. Every one of them.” Trixie shudders with laughter. He’s giddy and disoriented from the jet lag, from the surrealism of the moment. “God, the time i lost jerking off over that sordid lot!” Katya groans, keeping his voice low. “Days, probably. Weeks of my life! The squandered potential!” 

Trixie bites his ear. “Right here?”

Katya squirms. Trixie holds him closer. “ _Yes_ , right here, like, lying in bed just chafing my dick over…” He trails off, thinking. “I mean, they all knew I was a fag, I’m sure of it, and some of them were _rotten._ But he had this one friend, his name was - oh my god. Oh, my god, Trixie, I can’t remember his name.” He laughs at himself. “It doesn’t matter. He always wore this old Clemens jersey, number 21, don’t ask me why I remember _that_.”

Katya’s voice gets softer, faraway, as he remembers. Trixie pillows his head on his shoulder to listen. “And he was always really - y’know, like, for a high school boy, pretty nice. And he came over looking for my brother one time when he was off with his girlfriend, and it was just me in the house, and I remember - he really tried to stand there and talk to me for a minute. How’s your classes, isn’t Mrs. Whoever a huge bitch, you know. And then.” Katya takes a breath. Trixie hangs on it. “He, hand to god, he put his hand on my shoulder, up by my neck, and he said - ‘you’re a good kid, Bri.’” Katya’s shivering with laughter. “And I swear - that little moment of, like, unprovoked compassion, I must have jacked off about that for a _month._ God, I would’ve given my right ball to slob on that knob for fifteen seconds.”

Trixie closes his eyes, directing all of his mental energy to keeping still. “You didn’t interrupt me once just now,” Katya points out. “Baby, you fall asleep?”

“No, no, I’m here.” Trixie swallows. Katya shifts, and suddenly goes completely still. Trixie feels himself flush a very festive scarlet.

“Oh my _god,_ ” he hisses, voice practically trembling with delight. “Trixie. Are you _hard,_ you sick little freak?”

“No!” Trixie tries to wriggle backwards, but there’s nowhere to go. “Whatever! No!”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Katya whisper-shrieks. “You are the loudest fag in the entire universe. And don’t lie, bitch, we’re in a _twin bed._ You can’t lie to me in a twin bed!” Katya’s wheezing with laughter, and Trixie suppresses the impulse to smother him to death with the nearest pillow. “Jesus Christ, that monster dick’s practically phased right into my asshole,” he’s crowing. 

“Oh my god, I’m _sorry!”_ Trixie drawls. “Sorry that your tender moment with your older brother’s friend is an objectively hot story!”

Katya manages to get his hysterics under control, reaching back for Trixie’s hip, keeping him from escaping. “Don’t apologize.” He’s breathing more slowly now, more deeply, even as Trixie’s heart hammers harder with every second that passes. “Just give a bitch some warning.” Then he’s arching back against him, rubbing his ass against Trixie’s dick. 

“Oh my god.” He snakes his hand down, trails it over Katya’s dick, straining hard in his sweatpants. Katya makes a little noise. “Quiet,” Trixie whispers. “You don’t want to wake your whole family up, do you?” With the whole front of him pressed against Katya’s back, he’s got a perfect angle to reach into his sweatpants and stroke him through the thin fabric of his boxer briefs. He feels Katya’s dick twitch against his fingertips, and smiles into his neck. “You ever bring a boy up here in high school?” he asks, hushed. He traces over him gently, barely letting himself touch. Katya lets out another long breath, but it doesn’t sound so steady.

“No. God, no,” he murmurs. “That was not - exactly on the table for me at that time.” Trixie curls his fingers around him. Katya’s hips twitch forward. “Fuck, Trixie, don’t tease me.”

“It’s Christmas,” Trixie says, feigning deep offense. “I’d never.” He sucks a kiss under Katya’s ear, darting his tongue out to taste him, all salt and clean skin. His brain swims. “Here, suck.” He brings his hand up, and Katya takes him right into his mouth, licking and sucking at Trixie’s fingers with greedy abandon. Trixie sinks his teeth into his own lip to keep from making a sound at the feel of his tongue working over and between them. “Okay, all right, that’s good. Jesus, don’t get carried away,” he says after a minute, pulling back. Katya fights him a little, moaning in protest, but Trixie extracts his fingers before he loses himself completely to it.

“You know,” Katya pants, “this is already fairly sacrilegious, can you not take _Our Lord’s_ name in vain on top of it?”

Trixie snorts. “Oh my god. I’m sorry. I won’t tell fucking John the Baptist on your leg,” he says, rolling his eyes. He reaches down again, getting inside Katya’s underwear this time, taking him in his hand. Katya jerks against him. 

“That’s Saint Joseph, you idiot.” He swallows. “Trixie, c’mon, _fuck_.” 

“And anyway,” Trixie goes on in his ear, tightening his grip, working just the base of Katya’s dick with his fist, “you think God’s got nothing better to do tonight than watch you come all over your childhood sheets? The arrogance!”

Katya’s breath catches. Trixie loves getting him like this, desperate for him. His own cock strains in his underwear, and Katya presses his ass back against him, grinding up in one hard motion. Trixie wraps Katya up tight against him with an arm over his chest, starts jerking him off with his other hand in long, careful strokes. “Oh, _fuck,_ ” Katya whispers, turning away from Trixie to press his face into the pillow hard. 

“Right.” Trixie sinks his teeth into Katya’s shoulder, making him gasp sharply. “Shhh,” he whispers. “That good?” 

“Uh-huh.” Katya’s squirming, now, arching in a way that feels deliberate. Trixie’s so hard it’s making him dizzy, and he can feel how wet he is, too, feel the tug of his slick cock against the front of his underwear every time he thrusts forward toward Katya’s body. 

“You like how that feels?” Trixie mumbles in Katya’s ear. He nods mutely, pushing back. Trixie, stupid with lust, thrusts toward him again, harder. Katya lets out a sound through his teeth, high and surprised, loud even through the down of the pillow. “Hey, shhh, hey,” Trixie gasps. He moves his free hand to Katya’s waist and tugs their hips together, tight. “Listen - you want me to fuck you a little bit?”

He blurts it out before he can even think about it, weigh the pros and cons or possible outcomes in his head. Katya pauses for a second, and Trixie mourns the loss of the moment, bites his cheek before he can say anything else that might spook him further. There’s a second of silence that drags on into a hundred years in Trixie’s addled brain. Then, Katya’s whispering, “Yes. Yes yes yes.”

Trixie’s mouth drops open. His cock throbs. “Can you - can you be quiet?” he asks. 

Katya huffs out a silent laugh. “I can try.” His voice is a harsh rasp. Trixie squeezes him again, and he reaches down and grabs Trixie’s wrist, a warning, too much.

Trixie gets his arm out from under Katya and pushes himself up on his elbow. Katya drops onto his back to stare up at him. He doesn’t stop stroking Katya’s dick, but he slows down, watching the way his throat works and his eyes flutter closed. “Tell me what you want me to do,” Trixie whispers. “I’ll do anything you want.”

Katya’s eyes flash open. His lips part, and Trixie stills his hand, giving him a little space to think. “I want…” He swallows. “Like, I can’t take your dick, Mary, I’m not gonna.” 

“No, oh my god, I totally - of course not,” Trixie babbles, like an idiot. “No, I know.” He doesn’t know if Katya’s ever really enjoyed getting fucked, and Trixie knows he’s not exactly sized for beginners. But he’s also not about to ask him his whole sexual history now, not when Katya’s looking at him with his eyes huge and hungry, his chest rising and falling like he’s been running for miles. Trixie could press his hand to Katya’s ribs and feel the same pulse hammering in his own ears. “We can just.”

“Uh-huh,” Katya agrees. Trixie leans in and kisses him, open-mouthed, still stroking him slowly. Katya’s hips arch up toward him again. He doesn’t even realize how bad he wants it. Trixie knows how it feels, knows what it’s like to need it like that.

“I really want to suck your dick while I do it,” Trixie murmurs. The cool blue light makes him bold, like all of this is a dream and he can say anything he wants. Katya’s breath chokes off in a way that is _extremely_ real. Trixie clambers up to his knees and moves down the little bed as carefully as he can. The springs screech under him, loud enough to wake the entire house, he’s certain. He freezes so fast he almost topples over, and Katya laughs at him behind a clenched fist.

“It’s fine, queen,” he whispers. “People move in their sleep.”

Trixie settles between Katya’s thighs and gently pushes one leg up, bending it at the knee for better access. “I just don’t need, like, your whole-ass family realizing that their prodigal son is being defiled amidst his assorted childhood relics.” Katya lets out a squeak of laughter which truly only makes matters worse. Trixie slaps his knee with the back of his hand. “ _Bitch!_ You said you’d be quiet,” he chides, trying not to smile. Katya shrugs, still half-hiding his face behind one hand. Trixie shakes his head at him, then reaches up for the waistband of Katya’s sweatpants. “Get out of these,” he whispers. Katya shucks them down with his underwear and kicks his legs free, then yanks his tee over his head for good measure. Trixie pulls his own shirt off, just to be fair, then pushes Katya’s leg up again. “You look so good like this,” he whispers, then sinks down over him to suck the head of his cock into his mouth. 

Katya lets out a choked-off groan. At this angle, Trixie can take him as deep as he likes, but he goes slow, inch by inch. With the luxury of time, he could suck his dick for hours, drive him slowly out of his mind like this. What mind he’s got, anyway. He has an arm thrown over his mouth, now, and Trixie can see the way his jaw works against the skin to keep himself quiet. With his own free hand, Trixie strokes over the jut of Katya’s hipbone, holding him in place. Katya’s breath is coming shorter now, sharper, and he reaches down suddenly and finds the shell of Trixie’s ear with his fingers, tugs softly.

Trixie pulls off. “Okay,” he whispers. He looks up at Katya, who lifts up as best he can, staring down at him with a helpless expression. “Okay,” Trixie repeats. 

“Please.” Katya’s voice is so low. Trixie’s mouth opens, then closes again. He’s desperate not to misspeak. It feels like trying to guess at a password, trying not to get locked out of something vital and precious. 

“You really want this?” he finally says. Katya’s still stroking along his ear, and Trixie turns his head, nuzzles against his palm. He’s in his hands, really, now, all the time. 

Katya’s mouth quirks up. “I do,” he tells him. Trixie’s heart crashes up into his throat.

“Alright.” He presses a kiss against Katya’s hipbone. “We’ll go super slow.” He carefully shifts Katya’s knee a little higher. It goes easily, because the bitch is approximately quadruple-jointed; Trixie could tie his whole leg in a knot if he wanted to, and Katya would just groan and ask for more. Trixie adds, quickly, “If it doesn’t feel good, just tell me. Don’t make me read your fucking mind.”

“I’ll tell you.” 

At a certain point, Trixie’s got to be the one waiting on the second platform, hands out, ready to catch Katya when he leaps. “Okay,” he repeats. “Hang on.” Katya nods, and Trixie moves as quietly as he can to the suitcase on the floor, fumbling for their toiletries bag in the dim light. He finds it blindly, gets his hand around what he’s almost positive is their bottle of lube, and tries not to fully swan-dive back into the bed in his excitement. Katya’s exactly where he left him, arm draped over his eyes. Trixie has half a mind to tell him not to hide his face, that he doesn’t have to feel like that, then thinks better of it. This is a lot. Everything’s a lot. He gets on his knees between Katya’s spread legs and pulls him a little closer, lifts his hips carefully toward himself. “Can I suck your dick a little more?” he asks in a whisper, just to hear Katya gasp again. He nods hard once, and Trixie takes it, opening up for him and swallowing him down in an easy, fluid motion. 

Katya makes a halting, pained sound, then catches himself, letting it out instead on a slow, silent breath. Trixie pops the cap on the lube one-handed and squeezes, rubbing some over his middle and index fingers to try and warm it up a bit. “Trixie, it’s okay,” Katya suddenly blurts out in a harsh whisper. “It’s good, I want it, do it.” 

Trixie doesn’t stop sucking him, squeezing the base of his cock with his left hand. His right moves up, carefully. He’s got his eyes open, and Katya brings his arm away from his face to look straight at him. From this angle, his eyelashes look impossibly long. Trixie feels a swell of tenderness rising inside him, tries to tell him with his eyes - _you’re safe with me, you’re good, I’ve got you_. He just blinks at him, and Katya smiles, faintly. Trixie lines up and eases the tip of his middle finger inside him, very slowly. He pulls off Katya’s dick for a second. “So far so good?” he whispers, pushing forward just a bit.

Katya nods. His eyes flit from Trixie to the ceiling and back again. “I mean, like, I can barely feel it,” he mumbles back. Trixie leans down again to suck him back into his mouth, and Katya jerks under him. Trixie suppresses a grin, and gives him a little more. 

He used to lie on his dating profiles, claim to be vers. Which. It’s not like he _can’t._ It just seems like a lot of work, mostly, telling someone you’re a top, a lot of time checking in and managing feelings. Or worse, trying to meet some expectation of acting tough and masc and uncaring in a way that strikes him as false when someone else does it, let alone himself. Easier to be what he is, to be open and soft and able. And lazy. That’s, honestly, not a small part of the appeal.

But it’s different with Katya, like everything is. He wants to give him everything, anything he needs, and it’s not work. It’s a pleasure, a gift, to be trusted like this. To be told _yes_. He pushes a little further, curls his finger inside of Katya, searching, trying to make it good, to make it worth his time. 

At once, his hips jerk. His leg twitches like he’s taken a lightning strike to the chest. Trixie’s eyes flash up to his face. He pulls off again. “How’s that feel?” he whispers. Katya’s gone red from throat to chest. His eyes are closed. “Katya,” Trixie breathes, “tell me.”

“It’s alright,” Katya hisses out through gritted teeth, so Trixie does it again. Katya’s eyes shoot open this time. “It’s _good,_ ” he says, almost shocked, and Trixie’s own cock jerks at the sound. 

“If you want,” Trixie murmurs, “I can give you more.” Katya nods before he’s even finished his sentence, and Trixie adds a second finger, as carefully as he can. Katya barely reacts at all to the added girth, but his hips angle up in a silent plea for Trixie to keep going. “You’re doing, like, _really_ great,” Trixie says, and then curls over him to suck him into his mouth again.

Trixie hears one of the pillows hit the floor with a muffled thud, and glances up at Katya with a warning look. But Katya can’t see him; he’s brought both hands up over his face again, like it’s all too much. All the muscles in his arms are visible, bulging, his whole upper body tensed with the effort of staying focused, quiet. Trixie moves inside him easily, though, rubbing up against that same spot over and over. Every time he hits it, Katya twists under him, and Trixie’s run out of hands to keep him in place. They’re gonna fall right onto the floor if he’s not careful. He glances up at Katya’s face again, at his tensed jaw and the long line of his neck, and relaxes his throat to take him deeper.

Katya makes a strangled sound, and Trixie almost laughs around him. “Fuck, you’re so good,” Katya whispers. Trixie lets his eyes close into it, into the glow that rises up through him at the words . Katya’s so hard on his tongue. Trixie can taste how close he is. He lets out a low, soft groan to let him know this is where he wants to be, this is exactly what he wants to be doing. “Fuck,” Katya whispers again. Trixie drives into him a little harder. “ _Trixie_! I’m -” 

Trixie pulls off, dragging his tongue up from the base of Katya’s dick to the tip. “Gonna come like this?” he whispers. He starts jerking him off, left-handed, which is awkward, sloppy, but Katya hardly seems to mind. “I just want to make you feel good,” he murmurs. He can hear how his words bleed together, tongue slow and heavy from sucking Katya’s cock. “I want you to feel how it is for me, how much I love having you inside me.”

Katya’s hand shoots to Trixie’s left wrist, squeezes once. “You do, I do,” he whispers, and then again, more urgently, “Trixie, I’m -” 

Trixie blinks up at him. “You’re a good kid, Bri,” he tells him softly, and then takes him all the way to the back of his throat.

“Oh, fuck _you!”_ Katya says, not at all quietly, just as his hips lift off the bed toward Trixie’s body. He throws a hand over his mouth, but it’s way too late. “I hate you _so_ much!” he chokes as he comes down Trixie’s throat. He holds Trixie’s head in place, thrusting roughly into his mouth, and Trixie takes it, gives it to him, laughing silently through his nose.

“You are _psychotic,_ ” Katya pants. “Fuck _you._ ” Trixie pulls back, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and carefully withdraws his fingers. Katya moves with him, letting out a wrecked exhale. He’s sprawled across the whole bed, loose-limbed, like he’s been dropped from a great height. He doesn’t sound angry in the slightest. “You are _rotted_ , you are a _snake person._ ” 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Trixie giggles, trying to keep his voice down, like Katya’s yell won’t have woken the entire house. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“No fuckin’ kididng, bitch,” Katya says, raising his head up for just a second to shoot him a withering look before flopping back down against the one pillow still on the bed. The headboard thuds against the wall a little, like it matters now. “You never can, can you?”

“I need all kinds of help,” Trixie murmurs, crawling up to straddle Katya’s body, leaning close for a kiss. Katya wriggles under him, feigning disinterest, but Trixie knows him better. “C’mon, Katya, _please._ ” 

“I am _not_ touching your dick, you fucking monster,” Katya says primly, even as his hand comes around to drape over Trixie’s waist, drag his hips close against his own. Trixie’s cock is so hard between them. He grits his teeth against all the noise he wants to make. 

“That’s fine, that’s okay,” he whispers, thrusting down against Katya’s hip. He’s sparking like a Roman candle. He manages to get a hand down between them and pull himself free of his underwear, grip tight, stroke just a few times as he ruts against Katya’s body. Katya holds him close, making soft, encouraging sounds. It doesn’t take much. 

“There you go,” Katya whispers in his ear, “C’mon, that’s good, right?” Trixie’s panting into his neck, thinking of how Katya jerked under him as he fucked him, of how his eyes went so wide, of how Trixie was _inside_ him. Katya suddenly hisses, “You’d _better_ not shoot your load on these fucking sheets, bitch, you think we got the luxury of a wet spot in a bed this size? That’s it, come for me, show me how much you liked fucking me like that -” 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Trixie gasps, coming all over his fist, both of their stomachs. Katya’s eyes are huge on his, adoring. Trixie kisses him through it, and Katya opens up for him with a sound almost like a pleased purr. 

They peel apart, Trixie cramped into the corner of the bed now. “I think we were super, super quiet,” he says sincerely, and Katya wheezes with laughter.

“God, that…” He’s still breathing hard, trying to level himself out. He stops laughing, gets an arm around Trixie and tugs him in close to his chest. “I mean.” Trixie looks up at him, but his eyes are on the ceiling. Trixie watches him think. “That was nice. It was, Trixie, I mean it, thank you.” 

Trixie chuckles. “Please. Thank _you._ I’m just glad you, like…” He pauses. “Like, you trusted me, and that’s really fierce. And I know it’s not easy. Thank you.”

“Well, Merry Christmas,” Katya says lightly. “There you have it. My worn-out asshole, that’s your present. Now there’s nothing left for you for Christmas morning.” 

Trixie starts to shriek, but Katya grabs the pillow from the floor and slams it over both their faces before the noise can get past his teeth. “This is what I get for opening it early,” Trixie manages from under several inches of down, and then Katya’s writhing, squeezing Trixie tight like that’ll stop either of them from making any more noise.

“This is excerpted from the lost, deeply accursed missing verse of ‘Santa Baby,’” Katya gasps. 

“ _A zombie pussy under the tree, for me,_ ” Trixie whisper-sings. Katya’s shaking so hard with silent laughter that he’s genuinely concerned they’re going to topple to the floor and end up in the emergency room for Christmas after all. 

“Stop, stop, stop,” Katya hisses. Trixie shuts his mouth, fighting off giggles. Katya throws the pillow aside but draws the blanket, rumpled at their feet, up over their heads. He brings a hand up to his face and strokes his cheek. “Trixie,” he murmurs. “Like. I could do this with you forever, you know?” 

All the laughter fades out of him at once. Katya’s eyes are wide open, so bright on his even in the dim light. Trixie swallows. “Forever, huh?” 

Katya nods. He leans in and presses his nose against Trixie’s. “Like, if you wanted to. If that’s. If that’s something you think about.” 

Trixie closes his eyes, so everything is reduced down to Katya’s soft breath on his lips, his nose brushing his own. The sun is rising, slowly, and if they haven’t woken everyone, they’ll all be up soon anyway. But right now, this moment belongs just to them. “You know I think about that, Brian,” he says. “Of course I do. You know that.” He doesn’t want to believe it, what he thinks Katya’s saying, doesn’t know if he can take it right now.

Katya smiles brightly. “Cool,” he says. Like he’s just agreeing to a date, like it’s just an invitation to Christmas with his family, like it’s anything. 

Trixie suppresses another scream. “‘Cool?’” he demands. Katya is still smiling serenely, but he tilts his head a fraction so their lips meet. Trixie kisses him, trying to breathe through the sudden tightness in his throat. 

“It’s Christmas, and we’re here,” Katya says softly. “I think that’s pretty cool, don’t you?” 

Trixie opens his mouth and finds himself strangely without language. Their faces are close enough that Katya is just one blue eye, staring straight into him. Trixie knows that’s what Katya sees, too, a single dark eye blinking back. Slowly, he lifts a hand and traces it between their chests, running his fingers over the wires that hiss and spark between them every moment they’re together, crackling with energy, wild and loud and unpredictable. Katya sees what he’s doing and grins, but he doesn’t say anything, either, just catches Trixie’s fingers up in his and brings them to his heart. 

Around them, outside, the world is waking up, cold and bright. In here, tucked close together, it’s summer, and they’re happy, silent, warm. 

**Author's Note:**

> katya sings “winter” by Tori Amos while she’s feeling her snowy fantasy, and while definitely not a christmas carol, it is absolutely perfect to get in the seasonal spirit.
> 
> thank you for reading, and happiest of winter holidays to you!! stay warm!


End file.
